1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a card printing apparatus for printing a color image, a graphic design, etc. on a card (which is a general term for card-type printing medium) through a thermal image-transfer system.
2. Description of Related Art
A card printing apparatus for printing a color image on a card has been conventionally known (For example, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 62-11370). In this card printing apparatus, plural coloring materials for print which are formed of cyan, magenta, yellow and black dyes or the like and coated on an ink ribbon so as to be arranged at an equidistant interval are successively thermally transferred onto a card so as to be superimposed on the card using a thermal print head on the basis of a color image information which is optically read out from a color photograph or the like, or a color image information which is obtained through an image pickup operation of a video camera, thereby printing a color image on the card.
In order to carry out a card printing operation in such a card printing apparatus, a card is mounted (placed) on a stage which is horizontally movable, and then is horizontally moved by the stage while the ink ribbon is pushed against the card with being heated by the thermal print head, so that a coloring material for print on the ink ribbon is thermally transferred onto the card. This process is repeated for each of the plural coloring materials of cyan, magenta, yellow, black, etc. in turn on the ink ribbon to successively superimpose these coloring materials on the card and thermally transfer a color image on the card.
Further, in the conventional card printing apparatus as described above, operations of mounting and ejecting a card on and from the stage have been manually carried out, or automatically carried out using a card mounting apparatus and a card ejecting apparatus which are provided independently of the card printing apparatus.
However, the card printing apparatus adopting the manual card mounting and ejecting operations on and from the stage is very cumbersome in its operation, and degraded in its working performance. The card printing apparatus adopting the automatic card mounting and ejecting operations on and from the stage using the card mounting and ejecting apparatuses provided independently of the card printing apparatus is complicated in construction and high in cost. In addition, this card printing apparatus is degraded in its space factor, and thus requires a large-scale structure as a whole.